Posts Tagged ‘police

“Karamanlis or tanks.” That was the choice that Konstantinos Karamanlis posed to Greeks in 1974 upon his return from self-imposed exile in Paris after the overthrow of the country’s military Junta. The popular former Prime Minister’s triumphant return to Athens to lead the country’s transition back to democracy was followed by his sweeping election victory, and a place in history as one of modern Greece’s great statesmen.

Now, 34 years later, Karamanlis’ nephew, Costas Karamanlis is Prime Minister as Greece faces its worst riots in a generation. Radical youths and riot police clashed Tuesday for a fourth straight day following the Nov. 6 fatal shooting of Andreas-Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year-old boy by Athens police. During Monday night’s cabinet meeting, Karamanlis considered a proposal to declare a state of emergency, and the possibility that troops could return to the streets of Athens for the first time since the military dictatorship of 1967-1974.

The Prime Minister has said that full justice will be pursued in the death of the teenager, but also emphasized that there will be no leniency for the rioters. Still, the 45,000 strong police seem unable to find a way to quell the unrest. Dokos says the situation has spiraled out of control because “the government made the assumption that police intervention would have inflamed the crisis even further”. In a prime time televised address to the nation, Costas Karamanlis called those who engage in acts of violence and vandalism “enemies of Democracy” and asked for unity in order to isolate the radical elements.

For now at least, the 52-year-old Prime Minister has ruled out military intervention, hoping the police can restore order without having to resort to martial law.

#10, 14:18: 25 police stations besieged by students. The murderer cop was member of a nazi group (?)

Thursday , December 11, 2008

Mainstream media report that 25 police stations are besieged across Athens, with heavy clashes at some. They also report that more than 4500 tear gas cannisters have been thrown by the police these days; their supplies are running out (!) and more are being ordered from abroad.

Fresh demonstrations have been called for Athens, Thessaloniki, Patras and many more cities this evening. Reports on indymedia this morning claim that Alexandros’ murderer was a member of the nazi group “Golden Dawn” in the late eighties/ early nineties (without cutting his ties since) and that his family was active in the nazi collaborationist forces.

What a difference a year makes. Only last November, Iceland’s status as one of the most successful economies in the West was underlined when it was judged the best place to live in the world.

Iceland had ousted Norway from the head of the UN’s league table of 177 countries that compared per-capita income, education, health care and life expectancy – which, at 80.55 years for males, was third highest in the world.

This was only one in a string of glowing assessments of a country (population 313,000) which had pulled off a modern-day economic miracle. No wonder they are also said to be the happiest people on the planet. The inhabitants of this newly discovered Utopia, with its much-admired free health and education systems, bought the most books, owned most mobile telephones per head, and included the highest proportion of working women in the world.

The dramatic change in Iceland, from the poor relation of Europe to one of its wealthiest and apparently most successful, and now back again, dates from the mid-1990s with the privatisation of the banks and the founding of the country’s Stock Exchange.

Iceland had also presided over the fastest expansion of a banking system anywhere in the world. Little did anyone know that the expansion once so admired would go on to saddle the country with liabilities in excess of $100 billion – liabilities that now dwarf its gross domestic product of $14 billion.

Iceland overreached itself in spectacular fashion, and the party is coming to a messy end.

Since then the Icelandic stock exchange has dropped by more than 90%, and the Icelandic króna has declined more than 35 percent against the euro from January to September 2008. Inflation of prices in the economy was running at 14 percent. Iceland’s interest rates had been raised to 15.5 percent to deal with the high inflation,and the króna’s decline is reportedly only beaten by that of the Zimbabwean dollar.This depreciation in currency value put pressure on banks in Iceland, which were largely dependent on foreign debt.

Then in October, the three biggest banks, Kaupthing Bank hf, Landsbanki Island hf and Glitnir Bank hf have collapsed under the weight of about $61 billion in debts, 12 times the size of the economy, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Then the UK got cold feet over the money Iceland owed it.

So in the UK, the Landsbanki Freezing Order 2008, passed at 10 a.m. on 8 October 2008 to come into force ten minutes later, the UK Treasury went on to freeze the assets of Landsbanki and assets belonging to the Central Bank of Iceland, and the Government of Iceland relating to Landsbanki. The freezing order took advantage of provisions in sections 4 and 14 and Schedule 3 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, and was made “because the Treasury believed that action to the detriment of the UK’s economy (or part of it) had been or was likely to be taken by certain persons who are the government of or resident of a country or territory outside the UK.”

Then UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, announced that the UK government would launch legal action against Iceland over concerns with compensation for the estimated 300,000 UK savers.

No longer smiling, office workers hurry home wondering out loud if they will have jobs to go to by the end of the week. Car showrooms are deserted. Estate agents are closing early. There are few takers for the thousands of unsold houses on their books. An unexpected cold spell is keeping many people inside their homes, another reason why the shops, many of which have discount sales, are quiet.

Iceland’s rugged, treeless terrain, a barren stretch of volcanic rock, geysers and moss, means the country imports most of its food, other than meat, fish and dairy products. So for weeks now Iceland’s largest supermarket chains has been unable to get any foreign currency to make purchases abroad and another retailer’s electronic payment didn’t go through. Iceland has begun to see shortages of “regular goods'”. Wholesalers are demanding that importers pay before any goods are shipped, said Knutur Signarsson, head of the Reykjavik-based Federation of Icelandic Trade.

Icelanders are paying more for the goods they do get. The cost of fruits and vegetables, nearly all of which are imported, have gone up about 50 percent in recent months, said Steinunn Kristinsdottir, a 33-year-old Reykjavik resident who was leaving the Bonus store with her cart full.

“This situation really has been a bit troubling for people,” she said. “They don’t know what’s going to happen.”

So all this has lead to growing protests in Reykjavik calling for the government and heads of the banks to resign over its handling of the economy. On Novemeber 23, a breakaway group of several hundred protesters gathered outside the city’s main police station, after a larger demonstration, to demand the release of a man jailed in a previous demonstration. Some in the group tried to storm the police building. The man they wanted to release was later freed, after a fine he owed over a previous demonstration was paid by an “anonymous benefactor”.

Perhaps the police realized they were outnumbered and couldn’t win. Resign already.

“No matter who wins the election, it doesn’t matter. It’s not going to stop.” – August 22,2008, Gary Jackson, foundering member of Blackwater

Whoever wins the US elections will ‘face a crisis’ and ‘have to make some tough decisions’. and one thing is for certain; now more than ever we are becoming a global police state and mercenaries will profit.

War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. Narrated by actor and activist Sean Penn, the film exhumes remarkable archival footage of official distortion and exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive presidential administrations.

Two white supremacists allegedly plotted to go on a national killing spree, shooting and decapitating black people and ultimately targeting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, federal authorities said Monday.

In all, the two men whom officials describe as neo-Nazi skinheads planned to kill 88 people — 14 by beheading, according to documents unsealed in U.S. District Court in Jackson, Tenn. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community.

The spree, which initially targeted an unidentified predominantly African-American school, was to end with the two men driving toward Obama, “shooting at him from the windows,” the court documents show.

Three white supremacists with a sniper rifle and high on drugs who were arrested near the Democratic convention in Denver will not face charges even though officials believe that they wanted to assassinate Barack Obama.

The FBI and the US Secret Service carried out an “intensive” investigation into the plot — in which the supremacists talked of shooting Mr Obama as he accepted the Democratic presidential nomination in an open-air sports stadium on Thursday night — but found insufficient evidence of a “true threat”.

While the Paris metro and rail networks already operate around 9,500 CCTV devices, police have only 330 at their disposal to survey outside public areas. The new plan, dubbed “A Thousand Cameras for Paris”, will raise that number to more than 1,200 – with most installed in high-risk areas and outside railway and underground stations.

The figure is still small compared with London, where each citizen is caught on average several hundred times a day. Britain has about four million closed-circuit security cameras compared with France’s 340,000.

The CCTV drive follows Mr Sarkozy’s pledge last autumn to follow London’s surveillance lead. “I am very impressed by the efficiency of the British police thanks to this network of cameras (?),” the French president said. “In my mind, there is no contradiction between respecting individual freedoms and the installation of cameras to protect everyone’s security.”